I’ve been one of the loudest among those calling Allawi a puppet of the Bush Administration, so let me be among the loudest to commend him for painting a more realistic portrait of the situation in his country:
In his first speech before the interim national assembly here, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi gave a sobering account today of the threat posed by the insurgency, saying the country’s instability is a “source of worry for many people” and that the guerrillas represent “a challenge to our will.”
Dr. Allawi, who has tried hard to cast himself as a tough and confident leader since taking office in late June, asserted that general elections would go ahead in January as planned, but acknowledged that there were significant obstacles standing in the way of security and reconstruction. The nascent police force is underequipped and lacks the respect needed from the public to quell the insurgency, he said, and foreign businessmen have told him they fear investing in Iraq because of the rampant violence here.
Why the change? I’ll give him all benefit of doubt here…but before anyone even thinks about suggesting there’s not been any change…
The tone of the speech was a sharp departure from the more optimistic assessment Dr. Allawi gave to the American public on his visit to the United States last month. At his stop in Washington, Dr. Allawi made several sweeping assertions about the security situation in Iraq, including that the only truly unsafe place in Iraq was the downtown area of Falluja, the largest insurgent stronghold in Iraq, and that only 3 of 18 provinces had “pockets of terrorists.” Dr. Allawi did not directly contradict those statements in his appearance today, but his words reflected a darker evaluation of the state of the war.
[…]
Though Dr. Allawi joined President Bush last month in boasting of having 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi policemen, soldiers and other security officials, he acknowledged today that there were difficulties in fielding an adequate security force.
“It’s clear that since the handover, the capabilities are not complete and that the situation is very difficult now in respect to creating the forces and getting them ready to face the challenges,” he said, adding that “the police force is not well equipped and is not respected enough to lay down its authority.”
It may be as simple as Allawi recognizing that painting a rosy picture in the US, where most of us rely on what we’re constantly told are “biased” accounts, is one thing, but telling the same story to Iraqis who had to risk their lives to get to the assembly wasn’t quite as clever. Maybe he’s also sincerely concerned about these numbers:
A nationwide poll of 3,500 Iraqis just completed by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies shows that the number of Iraqis who say they are “very likely” to vote in the elections has dropped to 67 percent, from 88 percent in June. About 25 percent say they will “probably” vote. The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
If the Iraqi people feel it’s all just a sham, why should they bother to vote. If they can hear the bombs from their homes while Allawi is saying there’s no widespread problems, and then feel that there’s no way to reconcile his statements with their reality, it possibly undermines their faith that their votes will bring any true results.
This goes back to one of my mantras: telling the truth actually builds faith in the mission and credibility among critics. Are you listening, you know who?
This guy is like Arafat — saying one thing in English for one audience and another in the native tongue for the other audience.
Unfortunately, this also tends to support the puppet theory — like a dutiful tool, this man knowlingly read the false speech written for him by the re-elect Bush people.
This is also a maddeningly common aspect of the Bush administration — float deliberate lies from Allawi’s mouoth for political gain. Pretend that the truth therefore does not exist, even if the same guy then contradicts the talking points. Just like Clarke, O’Neil and now Bremer.
Makes you wonder what Allawi might have said to US Congress if he’d been allowed to make an independent speech.
Makes you wonder what Allawi might have said to US Congress
Sigh….yes….
maybe we’ll find out under a Kerry administration.
Feh. Again with the claims for which there’s zero basis. Nothing you or anyone else has posted here indicates that he was in any way prevented from saying whatever he pleased.
Slarti,
while technically you’re right…there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that Allawi was prevented from giving the same speech before the US Congress that he gave before the Iraqi assembly, doesn’t it bother you in the slightest how different the speeches are?
Different day, different speech. I’d be disappointed if, what with all the speech-writing help he was getting, he gave the same speech twice in a row.
:p
That was me, above, living up to my name.
It was really hard not to comment on your handle when I thought it was someone else…
Seriously though…do you think the vast difference in content should raise eyebrows? Doesn’t it suggest to you that Allawi’s speech here in the US was geared toward making Bush look good?
I’d think that’d be a good question for Allawi. I’m more than a little reluctant to hang my hat on speculation.
But since you’re in a speculative mood: what sort of puppet do you think Allawi’s being, if he’s allowing himself to be portrayed inconsistently in the media?
Sorry to be all glass-mostly-empty, but I’m with dmbeaster, especially after reading AFP’s take on the speech.
This isn’t Truth, daughter of time, stranger than fiction. This is Prevarication, daughter of expediency, banal beyond all human reckoning. It’s not even the, er, “speechwriting assistance” that gets me. It’s that the man got up in front of the already half empty glass called the national assembly and insisted that yes, yes, security is a problem, but he has a clever new (exceptional! improved!) plan — restore security and stability with the help of multinational forces and former-soviet-bloc artillery and APCs, so that elections can take place as scheduled, everywhere except where it’s too dangerous.
I mean c’mon now, seriously…
Doesn’t it suggest to you that Allawi’s speech here in the US was geared toward making Bush look good?
An alternative explanation is that Allawi felt that painting a rosy picture for the Americans was more conducive to retaining our ongoing help and support than the less optimistic version would have been.
See, this is just exactly where speculation can take you. Into a debate that rests on nothing but opinion.
“nothing but opinion.”
I don’t understand – there’s event A at time alpha and event B at time beta, all of which is agreed on by the observers debating. Of course at some level everything is an opinion (assuming there are opinions) but why give up?
Again with the claims for which there’s zero basis. Nothing you or anyone else has posted here indicates that he was in any way prevented from saying whatever he pleased.
And yet, what he said to US Congress echoed Bush/Cheney campaign talking points on Iraq. Very nicely. You’re right, apart from the minor detail that apparently he had “help” writing that speech, and “help” that came from the Bush/Cheney campaign: and the equally minor detail that he’s making a much more realistic speech in Iraq: yes, I do wonder what he’d have said to US Congress if he hadn’t had “help” from the Bush/Cheney campaign.
That’s the disadvantage of creating puppets: you don’t know.
Actually, as a puppet, you expect him to willingly mouth whatever Bush/Cheney’04 wants him to say. He is not being coerced — he gladly accepted the role as puppet, and all it entails, which includes lying on command if ordered to.
So there is no significance to what he might have said “if he could speak freely” — what he freely wants to do is please his handlers, period. He just unfortunately blew his script by telling version B to the Iraqis — like Arafat did for years, not expecting to be busted on the contradiction.
I can see that, rilkefan. You act as if Conclusion C automatically goes with Event A, when in fact it’s entirely a subjective assessment. If Conclusion C were the only possible one, or even demonstrably the most probably correct one, I’d concede you have a point. So far I haven’t seen anything resembling a compelling argument that these conclusions follow, much less that they’re the sole conclusions that follow.
But if it’s true, as you claim, that the case is much less ramshackle than it appears to me, I’d be happy to listen to you make it.
I can see that, rilkefan. You act as if Conclusion C automatically goes with Event A, when in fact it’s entirely a subjective assessment.
It’s nevertheless a logical followthrough. And you don’t seem to have a problem with Sebastian’s “Event A”, “Event B”, “Conclusion C” post on CBS, I note.
Maybe it’d simplify things if you’d point out exactly what you object to, Jesurgislac, and then we can discuss my personal shortcomings in detail.
But for the nonce, I’ll just note for the record that while I may comment on some arguments that I consider to be poorly made, I’m under no obligation to vet all arguments made by everyone, everywhere, for rigor. Odd how you never ding Gary Farber for selective criticism. 8P